Friday, October 23, 2015

Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi Hearing really was NOT as good for her as the Mainstream Media would seem to want everybody to think

If you don’t get at least some of your news from conservative news sources, you probably might be thinking that Hillary Clinton sailed through yesterday’s House Select Committee on Benghazi Hearing without the slightest ripple of a problem for either her or her campaign for the presidency — BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

Newsmax, the conservative news blog says that there were thirteen key points that “EMERGED” as a result of the House Select Benghazi Committee–Hillary Clinton Hearing of 10/22/15 — and those key points are now part of the record

In addition, it came out that during the time after the fall of Qaddafi and before the attack on the Benghazi Mission, there were more than 600 Benghazi security requests, which "... never reached Sec/State Hillary Clinton’s desk..." — BUT — Ther were 150 reports on Libya from HRC's "friend," Sidney Blumenthal, that got through to Sec/State Clinton directly

After the fact, it clearly seems that the Mainstream Media set such a low bar for Hillary Clinton to achieve a favorable outcome in front of the Benghazi Committee, that it was going to have been be called "An HRC Victory" if she didn’t either explode into flames in the hearing room or melt from a splash of water like the Wicked Witch in “The Wizard of OZ.”

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified in front of the House Select Committee on Benghazi for several hours on Thursday [and it was nowhere near the 11+ hours that some have reported -- just subtract the break times and you're down to about 8 hours]. During that hearing, while several of the GOP congressional panelists sought to hold her accountable for her role in the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and two CIA contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty; all the Democrats on the panel ran interference for Mrs. Clinton using many diversionary tactics.

According to a report in Newsmax, there were thirteen key revelations that were raised during the hearing ( See “13 Shocking Revelations From Hillary's Benghazi Hearing’ by Nick Sanchez, 10/23/15, Newsmax [http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/hillary-clinton-benghazi-hearing-revelations/2015/10/23/id/697712/]).

Here are the thirteen points that Newsmax says emerged at the 10/22/15 Benghazi Committee Hearing; and they are now matters of record:
1. Hillary Clinton originated the false narrative about a YouTube video protest;
2. Hillary Clinton repeatedly attempted to avoid any personal responsibility for Ambassador Stevens' death;
3. Hillary Clinton likely never spoke to "her friend" Chris Stevens after he became the Libyan Ambassador;
4. Ambassador Stevens didn't have Hillary Clinton's email address;
5. Hillary Clinton said she "knew and admired" Chris Stevens, but referred to him as "Chris Smith" on night of his death;
6. Hillary Clinton says that knew "nothing" about Ambassador Stevens’ meeting with amy al-Qaida affiliates;
7. Hillary Clinton’s “friend,” Sidney Blumenthal, had direct access to Sec/State Clinton, in a way that Ambassador Stevens did not;
8. Sidney Blumenthal was Hillary Clinton's "most prolific emailer on Libya";
9. Neither President Barack Obama nor his White House staff knew that Sidney Blumenthal was emailing Sec/State Clinton concerning her duties as Sec/State;
10. Not all Sidney Blumenthal's emails were “unsolicited,” as had been claimed by Hillary Clinton;
11. Hillary Clinton said she didn't know where Sidney Blumenthal's intel information was coming from;
12. The Benghazi Committee still didn't have all of Ambassador Stevens' emails from Dept/State at the time of the 10/22/15 hearing with Hillary Clinton; and
13. During her testimony on 10/22/15, Hillary Clinton suggested Ambassador Stevens was making a joke about security in one of his emails:

Here are some other key points that came out at the 10/22/15 hearing [with You Tube video links]:CONGRESSMAN MIKE POMPEO SHOWED THAT MORE THAN SIX HUNDRED (600+) SECURITY REQUESTS RELATED TO BENGHAZI SECURITY “DID NOT REACH HILLARY CLINTON’S DESK” — YET 150 OF SID BLUMENTHAL’S E-MAILS ABOUT LIBYA & BENGHAZI REACHED SEC/STATE CLINTON DIRECTLY

Congressman Mike Pompeo confronted former Secretary of State with the fact that there were over six hundred (600+) requests for security at Benghazi, Libya. He specifically noted that in 2012 alone, there were over 100 requests placed in the first quarter of 2013, 172 requests in the second quarter of 2012 and 83 requests in the third quarter and right up to the time of 9/11/12.
(See “Pleading For Security - 600+ Security Requests Never Reach Hillary Clinton - Benghazi Gate - F&F” by Mass Tea Party... From Fox & Friends, 10/23/15 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cLOZ1eI-5s]).

In response, Hillary Clinton acknowledged the total of requests by her silence and denied none of the claims about the Blumenthal E-mails, instead she responded as follows: “.... ‘Congressman, as you’re aware, [Blumenthal’s] a friend of mine. He sent me information he thought might be of interest. Some of it was. Some of it wasn’t. Some of it I forwarded to be followed up on. The professionals and experts who reviewed it found some of it useful, some of it not.... He had no official position in the government, and he was not at all my adviser on Libya. He was a friend who sent me information that he thought might be helpful.... It was information that had been shared with him that he forwarded on, and as someone who got the vast majority of information that I acted on from official channels, I read a lot of articles that brought new ideas to my attention, and occasionally, people including him and others would give me ideas. They all went into the same process to be evaluated.’..."

To which Congressman Pompeo replied: “Yes, ma’am. I will tell you that the record that we’ve received today does not reflect that. It simply doesn’t. We’ve read everything that we could get our hands on. It’s taken us a long time to get it, but I will tell you, you just described all of this other information that you relied upon, and it doesn’t comport with the record that this committee has been able to establish today."

CONGRESSWOMAN SUSAN BROOKS’ CONFRONTED FORMER SEC/STATE HILLARY CLINTON WITH TWO DEMONSTRATIVE PILES OF HER OWN E-MAILS

In response to the Congresswoman’s question, Hillary Clinton said Chris Steven’s was sent into Benghazi on a Greek freighter on April 5, 2011 as her special representative to do “reconnaissance” – “... building relationships and gathering information...”

In 2011, when Chris Stevens was a “special representative” of Secretary of State Clinton, there were 795 E-mails from Hillary Clinton’s staff about Benghazi and Chris Stevens; in 2012 when Chris Stevens had become the Libyan Ambassador, there were only 67 E-mails related to Benghazi (See “Rep. Susan Brooks Confronts HIllary Clinton with Stack of Emails” from “TheBlaze” 10/22/15, You Tube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjHzBBAA4Jk]). As a result, Congresswoman Brooks told former Secretary of State Clinton that based on her E-mail records alone, it would appear that Hillary Clinton had "lost interest" in Libya, Benghazi and Chris Stevens

CONGRESSMAN JIM JORDAN CONFRONTED HILLARY CLINTON ABOUT HER E-MAIL TO CHELSEA CLINTON ON 9/11/12 – HER COMMUNICATION WITH EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT ON 9/12/12 – AND STATEMENTS OF GREG HICKS AND OTHER STATE DEPARTMENT PERSONNEL, ALL SAYING THAT THE 9/11/12 ATTACK WAS THE RESULT OF TERRORISTS NOT DEMONSTRATORS –AND IT WASN’T PART OF ANY DEMONSTRATION ABOUT A YOU TUBE VIDEO – HE ALSO CHARGED THAT THE “INFLAMMATORY VIDEO” NARRATIVE ORIGINATED WITH HILLARY CLINTON HERSELF ON 10/22/12, WHEN SHE KNEW THAT IT WASN'T TRUE

In a very dramatic moment, Hillary Clinton was directly confronted by Congressman Jim Jordan as knowing the truth that the assault on the Benghazi compound was a pre-planned attack by an Al Qaida-affiliated group on the evening of 9/11/12 and the morning of 9/12/12 — but at the same time, “...not squaring with the American people” and putting out the false narrative about some obnoxious internet video (See “Jim Jordan GRILLS Hillary Clinton About Video Benghazi Committee Hearing” by William Foster, 10/22/15, You Tube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OzrFDBMd0g]). Congressman Jordan based his charge on Hillary Clinton’s personal E-mail to her daughter Chelsea Clinton while the Benghazi attack was still going on; also a cable to the President of Egypt on 10/12/12; and various formal statements by State Department personnel at and shortly after the 10/11/12 Benghazi attack.

5 comments:

Benghazi won’t be done with for a long-long time. your friend Gowdy and his Committee didn’t do a great job questioning Hillary, but it don’t matter, because Hillary said enough bad stuff on her own to keep Benghazi going until the movie comes out.

Gale, as you and some of our more political movie friends know, in politics it’s how the movie does that’s going to count in the end. Progressive Democrats read the Times, Indies read it on Kindle books, and Republicans and Reagan Democrats watch it in the movies or on cable.

Right now, what Gowdy did about Hillary and Benghazi will percolate and stay in the news enough so that Michael Bay’s movie, “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” will still be topical around New Years 2016. There’s an old story in the NY Post by Kyle Smith that has a trailer and tells all about it:

Oh yeah right Hillary didnt really gain that much since the hearing. The only thing that changed is all her opposition in democratic primary pulled out, except Eugene Debbs, and now polls show her beating every republican.

BACKFILL & A QUERY: THE “WHY WASN’T THIS FOLLOWED-UP — OR — ARE REPUBLICANS EMBARRASSED TALKING ABOUT ‘MANPADS’ ?” EDITION

WHY DID GOWDY’S HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE AND ALL THE OTHER BENGHAZI COMMITTEES STEER CLEAR OF DIGGING INTO THIS — AND WHY DID HILLARY SPECIFICALLY MENTION IT RIGHT AT THE TOP OF THE 10/22 HEARING ? ? ?

Here’s something that I didn’t mention above in my post, because it really wasn’t part of what “Emerged” for the first time during the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s questioning of Hillary Clinton.

In her own statements to the House Select Committee on Thursday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton essentially implied that Ambassador Chris Stevens was engaged in gathering up shoulder-fired missiles in Libya. Wouldn’t the committee's following-up and focusing on this effort to secure these dangerous weapons have been central to answering why the U.S. special mission in Benghazi might have been attacked Sept. 11, 2012 ? Even Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, the one Democrat who did ask several fact-centric questions of former Secretary Clinton, steered clear of this.

In her opening remarks Thursday, Clinton, referred to Ambassador Chris Stevens and a threat of shoulder-fired missiles reaching extremists. Former Secretary Clinton said , “.... Nobody knew the dangers of Libya better. A weak government, extremist groups, rampant instability. But Chris chose to go to Benghazi because he understood America had to be represented there at that pivotal time....” She also said Stevens “... also knew how urgent it was to ensure that the weapons Gadhafi had left strewn across the country, including shoulder-fired missiles that could knock an airplane out of the sky, did not fall into the wrong hands....”

These shoulder-fired missiles are called “Man-Portable-Air-Defense-Systems,” or “MANPADS.” [Don’t make any more jokes – that part of my question in the caption was quite enough] Many of these very dangerous weapons had fallen into the hands of some very bad actors in Libya immediately after the U.S.-NATO military campaign, which had been strongly pushed by Hillary Clinton, had effectuated the end Moammar Gadhafi’s rule in Libya. Clinton did not further comment on any role Stevens himself might have played in securing the MANPADS.

Later in her testimony, however, Clinton appeared to have addressed the sensitive nature of Stevens’ work, admitting, “Americans representing different agencies” later came into Libya and carried out “the same work” as Stevens but not overtly. In putting it just that way, the former Secretary of State apparently was referring to the CIA and its “Annex” located near the U.S. State Department “Special mission.” Clinton seemed to be implying that “U.S. Ambassador Stevens” was involved in some kind of operation that was beyond the normal diplomatic work of an ambassador. Without specifying the nature of the “same work” that both Stevens and “other agencies” were trying to carry out, Clinton clearly wanted everybody to know it was both important and sort of secret.

Come to think of it, there probably aren’t a lot of people who want to ask a lot of questions about “MANPADS”.....

DID I SAY THAT HILLARY DIDN'T OR WOULDN'T HAVE OR MAKE ANY "GAINS" FOLLOWING THE DEBATE AND/OR THE BENGHAZI HEARING ??? I DON'T THINK SO.....

To: "Anonymous said... at 8:10 AM" Gains in the polls and among your intra-party competitors are what they are -- and it looks like Hillary did OK with all that -- but long-term problems and hidden time-bombs are something else.....

About Me

I formerly have commented on various political blogs concerning Republican politics. Although the focus of my political commentary has been on the Brooklyn GOP and other aspects of politics in Brooklyn, I have also posted commentary about national matters.
If you wish to contact Galewyn Massey directly, please, Email to galewynmasban@gmail.com